How would you like to live anywhere, rent-free, for an entire year? That's the offer that New York City Mayor Eric Adams hopes the illegal aliens flooding his city can't refuse. But as it turns out, "anywhere" looks a lot more like "nowhere."
Last year, Albany authorized $25 million for the state's Migrant Relocation Program to find homes upstate for families of illegal aliens among New York City's estimated 200,000 illegals. Just because there is demand, however, doesn't mean there is a supply.
Only five of New York state's 62 counties — Westchester, Suffolk, Erie, Monroe, and Albany — currently accept illegal aliens from New York City. But Suffolk County might drop out, leaving only four. This Fox News report featured County Executive Edward Romaine (R) recently saying, "Suffolk County is not, nor will it be a sanctuary city, and we have not agreed to accepting undocumented migrants."
Suffolk is asking Albany for "clarification" about the program.
Meanwhile, Rockland County exec Ed Day (R) reminded the city, "You asked for it. You're a sanctuary city; we're not."
Translation: upstate and Long Island county officials are giving Adams the single-finger salute beloved by NYC residents.
Resistance to the program is statewide.
“It’s not about having families that have their work authorization or have done their paperwork on the way, it’s really about how many units they have available,” New York City Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said back in October when the program first got rolling. “I might be like, ‘let’s put an air mattress in there and let’s get this done.’ Somehow people don’t have the same sense of urgency I think that we do.”
It's weird how the people who are supposed to be taking in illegal aliens for a pittance don't have the same sense of urgency as the so-called sanctuary city trying to get rid of them.
For those families who did come here — albeit illegally — looking for a better life, having their first taste of America consist of endless, useless, expensive bureaucracy must be bitter. Informative, too.
Even the New York Times had to admit last week that the program is "struggling." The thinking behind it went like this, according to the Times report: "New York City is currently paying an average of nearly $400 per night to shelter each migrant household. So keeping 1,250 families in shelters for a year costs at least $180 million. The $25 million budget for the resettlement program works out to about $55 per night for each family."
Taxpayers must be thrilled by the savings.
A study released this time last year by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) says immigration costs U.S. taxpayers $151 billion a year — a figure that has surely gone nowhere but up after 12 more months of record-busting waves across the wide-open area once known as our southern border.
There is a more traditional, perhaps less expensive, and possibly longer-lasting solution to the problem of illegal aliens without food or shelter: deport them back to where they came from so that they might try entering the country legally next time.
I know it's a strange idea but these are strange times. What do you say we give it a try?
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